Photography is just a craft

removed account4 · Sep 9, 2009

scott

you are suggesting the photographer records a scene, and pulls out of it
what s/he wants, through development / printing technique
is the same as drawing or painting or sculpting ?
i would love to say they are the same, but i am sorry to admit they
are not the same at all. editing a scene is not the same as manually birthing it.

as thomas said, photography is photography ...

john

keithwms · Sep 9, 2009

Yes, why the need to compare photography to so many other fields... many of which are hundreds or even thousands of years older than photography, and hence rooted in entirely different cultural traditions and history.

Thomas Bertilsson said:
Photography is photography. It doesn't have to be anything else.

Agreed!

Mike1234 · Sep 9, 2009

I respectfully "partially" disagree with the assertion that art is defined by museums, auction houses and galleries. All of these organizations are run with money and this is what drives their businesses and their motivations. If the public accepts and buys bowls of rotten fruit as objects of art then most of said organizations will display and/or sell them as such. It's just a sad pitiful fact.

And FWIW I ask, what's wrong with being a craftsman vs. an artist?

Shaggysk8 · Sep 9, 2009

craftsman
noun
a person who is skilled in a particular craft.
an artist.

Take from that what you will I guess

jd callow · Sep 9, 2009

dpurdy said:
Art is what an artist makes using whatever tool he/she wants. Quality is a different question. Craftsmanship is a choice. No tool or technique is art unless someone uses it to express an aesthetic idea. Photography is not art and neither is singing writing drawing painting or sculpting unless someone uses them to express an aesthetic idea. A person can use anything. Grandma's cookies, the brewer's beer, the kid on the beach with a stick. All art.

I agree, but would add that the creator need not have art in mind when creating. Most people would say that they like/are inspired/moved, etc by the sound, feel, appearance of a work and that that reaction is tied to their interpretation, informed by their personal experiences which are, as likely as not, unrelated to what the creator of the work had in mind. Art is art when it 'works' on the participant. Only the OCD art 'lover' will require knowledge of intent prior to passing judgment about its artistic virtue.

Thomas Bertilsson · Sep 9, 2009

The trouble with photography is that very few people make the film and the paper from scratch. That definitely takes some of the craftsmanship out of it. We know how to use our materials, but not very well how to make our materials. The materials are served to us on a silver plate.

But then again, there is wet plate photography, or making your own emulsion and coating your own paper and glass plates, and mixing your own chemistry.

If Ilford, Foma, Rollei, Kodak, Fuji, and all those guys stopped making paper, chemistry, and film today, there would be a lot of scrambling photographers.
If all digital cameras were removed, people would scramble even more.
A sculptor just might get by.

removed account4 · Sep 9, 2009

Thomas Bertilsson said:
The trouble with photography is that very few people make the film and the paper from scratch. That definitely takes some of the craftsmanship out of it. We know how to use our materials, but not very well how to make our materials. The materials are served to us on a silver plate.

But then again, there is wet plate photography, or making your own emulsion and coating your own paper and glass plates, and mixing your own chemistry.

If Ilford, Foma, Rollei, Kodak, Fuji, and all those guys stopped making paper, chemistry, and film today, there would be a lot of scrambling photographers.
If all digital cameras were removed, people would scramble even more.
A sculptor just might get by.

if the ground stopped producing clay and stone and metals
a sculptor might be scrambling as well

Thomas Bertilsson · Sep 9, 2009

I'll give you that one, John. I have a feeling the sculptor might not even be around anymore...

doughowk · Sep 9, 2009

The ease of use of photography (thanks Kodak, etc.) blinds many people to the artistic potential of photography. A snapshot may rise to the level of art (or having artistic merit); but the snapshooter isn't necessarily an artist. This does not then negate photography as art. We don't hear the same chorus deriding abstract expressionism or primitivist paintings for which both are technically easy compared to realist painters.
The route I choose is to pursue Craft, and hopefully Art will arise. From Tillman Crane's newsletter

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only of how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
- R. Buckminster Fuller

clogz · Sep 9, 2009

Is photography art? Is art photography? Who cares....if photography is your thing...just concentrate on this.

Hans

Q.G. · Sep 9, 2009

Photography is a 'medium', just like a pen, or computer keyboard is.

If you want to talk art, you talk about what you do or don't do with it.

A craft is something when there is a degree of difficulty involved in using the medium (to whatever end).
And (important!) when there is somebody who admires how the difficulties are mastered.

Photography is easy. As easy as using a pen.
So it wouldn't say photography is, or could be, a craft.

Vaughn · Sep 9, 2009

I'll use manufactured film for as long as I can, lazy SOB as I am, but if I ever have to make my own 8x10 film or glass plates, I probably will. I make my own "photographic paper" -- though with platinum printing, I would hate to make the actual paper. and probably would forego the rigeramore to make my own platinum salts. Carbon prints, no problem -- as long as people eat Jello and take medicine in gel capsules, the manufacturing of gelatin will be robust. I won't have to go find a cow or pig to render to make my own gelatin.

However, I do have a picture in my mind of poor wild boars wandering around the hills with big bald patches on their bodies -- bushwacked by desperate painters in order to make brushes.

Sculptors should, and many (perhaps most), know how to make their tools. I have even made my own cameras -- if one wished to consider a cardboard box and a hand made pinhole a camera

If everyone had to make their own film and paper, there would be a lot more pre-editing going on!

Vaughn

Thomas Bertilsson said:
The trouble with photography is that very few people make the film and the paper from scratch...
But then again, there is wet plate photography, or making your own emulsion and coating your own paper and glass plates, and mixing your own chemistry.

If Ilford, Foma, Rollei, Kodak, Fuji, and all those guys stopped making paper, chemistry, and film today, there would be a lot of scrambling photographers.
If all digital cameras were removed, people would scramble even more.
A sculptor just might get by.

Thomas Bertilsson · Sep 9, 2009

Vaughn, that's good stuff. I did think about all 'alternative process' printers out there, with all of those glorious papers that are available. As much as it would be a pain to make that paper, it would definitely increase the level of craftsmanship in the process!

I like your wild boar visual... That's pretty funny, and now I'll keep thinking about it too!

Ian David · Sep 9, 2009

Thomas Bertilsson said:
Photography is photography. It doesn't have to be anything else.

This seems to sum it up nicely, Thomas. And much more clearly than anything Barthes wrote.

BetterSense · Sep 9, 2009

I like pretty pictures.

Lukas Werth · Sep 9, 2009

This also relates to my post two or three pages back.
Actually, I do think photography may be an art just as painting, and the people I paraphrazed just got something wrong. That is, just as drawing or painting may or may not be used as an art (if I make a sketch for you of how to find my house, this is not art), so may photography. I certainly see my own photographic efforts as efforts in expressing myself, communicating something which is inherent in the visual appearence I give to it (yes, which I give), and this, as far as I can see, is the artistic effort.
TheFlyingCamera, I liked your example of the Madonna of Loreto. This picture was painted long before photography was invented, and this makes a point: photography is simply used predominantly in these days for many purposes for which you had to paint before: protraits, documentation... I think photography and painting have much more in common than many people think, and I do think that, for instance, Paul Strand and Ansel Adams got this point theoretically all wrong.
As for Scruton, I may just as much appreciate bygone, homely, cosy scenes in a painting as in a photograph, I may appreciate photographic styles just as much as styles in painting.
As for the supposed automatism in the photographic act, this depends entirely on the intention of the photographer, and it depends on me how focussed my intention is.
Barthes' book is very famous, quoted very often, but I have a lot of issues with it. For a start, I certainly don't think it was chemistry which invented photography, or only in a trivial sense. The drive was a way of seeing the world. I also found that I simply look at photographic images in a very different way than Barthes describes for himself.

Rinthe · Sep 10, 2009

I'm also a painter, i think photography is simply a different medium like oil, acrylic or ink. but im a little confused about the craft part, i think all art forms have some kind of craft involved. its just what i think... for now

Sirius Glass · Sep 10, 2009

Lukas Werth said:
This picture was painted long before photography was invented, and this makes a point: photography is simply used predominantly in these days for many purposes for which you had to paint before: protraits, documentation... I think photography and painting have much more in common than many people think, and I do think that, for instance, Paul Strand and Ansel Adams got this point theoretically all wrong.

What Paul Strand and Ansel Adams objected to was the "painterly" movement's goal of making all photographs look like fuzzy paintings rather than using all of photography's capability.

Steve

Thomas Bertilsson · Sep 10, 2009

The contrast between straight and pictorialist photography...

I think I see a lot of 'in between' type of work these days, with portions of both. In my opinion, both have merit. (But who cares? Do what feels right.)

But that's probably for a different place and time to discuss.

Sirius Glass said:
What Paul Strand and Ansel Adams objected to was the "painterly" movement's goal of making all photographs look like fuzzy paintings rather than using all of photography's capability.

Steve

removed account4 · Sep 10, 2009

photography is more than just clicking the shutter ..
it allows people who want to use the negative or a print
as a stepping stone to do something else the ability to combine
different disciplines under the heading "photography"
it allows people to coat glass or metal or paper, polish metal or whatever and say " this is an art and a craft"
and it allows others to say " this isn't art of craft, this is just
a button pushed and someone else does the rest "

there is plenty of room at the table if someone wanders in off the street for a warm meal ...

Sirius Glass said:
What Paul Strand and Ansel Adams objected to was the "painterly" movement's goal of making all photographs look like fuzzy paintings rather than using all of photography's capability.

Steve

but the ironical ( yeah i know not a word )
think is that AA and the others
did not use all of photography's capabilities
by trying to make believe nothing but deep dof
and full tone images existed ...

i'll admit it, im a tween.
thanks thomas for reminding me ...

benjiboy · Sep 10, 2009

TheFlyingCamera said:
To step back in to these waters I've muddied, I'll assert what I think many of us can agree on - that Art and Craft are mutually dependent in the medium we call photography. That is, Art without Craft is a message without a medium, and Craft without Art is a medium without a message. I specifically was inspired to start this thread because someone elsewhere on APUG asserted that he believed photography is generally a craft, and that the work of specific individuals can approach (emphasis mine) art. Photography as a medium has been around for the past 170-some odd years, and it is well accepted into the canon of artistic media by now. Obviously, not every photograph is art, nor does every photograph evince craft (in many cases, a photograph will demonstrate an absolute lack of both). I'd love to see someone defend this assertion in a reasoned argument, because as we have just seen in the past three and some odd pages of comments, the vocal majority is quite capable of defending the opposite assertion.

If all the photographers in the World who claimed to be artist were laid end to end it would reach the Moon, and the world would be swimming in art.

TheFlyingCamera · Sep 10, 2009

benjiboy said:
If all the photographers in the World who claimed to be artist were laid end to end it would reach the Moon, and the world would be swimming in art.

Benji;

hardly a reasoned argument in defense of your thesis. The same could be said of lawyers, and we'd be awash in lawsuits (oh wait, we are!!!) but that wouldn't change anything. In ANY medium, be it photography, painting, sculpture, music or dance, there are far more pretenders and wannabes than there are successful practitioners. The fact that photography is a mechanical medium that enables casual users to employ it for non-artistic purposes in far greater numbers than sculpture or painting does not actually diminish the efforts of those who do, or the merits of those who succeed, certainly not more than making toy houses out of popsicle sticks diminishes the efforts of woodcarvers.

Ole · Sep 10, 2009

Photography is a just craft.

Ian David · Sep 10, 2009

benjiboy said:
If all the photographers in the World who claimed to be artist were laid end to end it would reach the Moon, and the world would be swimming in art.

I think the world is swimming in art... but a lot of it just isn't particularly exceptional.
What muddies the waters is the fact that (IMHO) there are far more people capable of consistently producing really good photographs than there are people with the talent to produce really good paintings or sculpture. In that sense, photography is in general terms easier than painting or sculpture - more people can do it well. This causes angst to some commentators and some of them respond by denying that photography is or can be art. I prefer to think that anything can be art (if the label is important), but it is then up to individual viewers how much admiration they wish to bestow on any given piece, be it painting, sculpture, photography or elephant dung glued to a board.

wiltw · Sep 10, 2009

Even a true artist, an oil painter or acrylic painter, has to master the craft of applying the paint! And there can be craftsmen with zero artistic eye. And the full spectrum in between.

Photography is just a craft

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